Summary:
The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places by Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass is written based on studies done on how people treat computers and media. The tests they conduct conclude that people treat these new medias like they do other people or real life. Hence their media equation: media = real life. The results suggest that people who interact with computers and other media respond better when the computer interacts with them the same way that they prefer people to interact with them. After each study, the authors suggest an interface change that would benefit the user based on the results of the study. Examples of these suggestions are a friendly spell checker or ensuring that a computer's voice is male.
Discussion:
After reading the book, I initially thought that most of the suggestions were common sense. However, I really had not given any thought to making a computer polite or conform to a culture's norms of treating people. Before, if there was an error message, you just relay it. If a user need to be informed of anything, just print out what they need to know to the screen and get the job done. Now I think that there is a reward for turning the dry interactions of computers into something more appealing for most consumers.
I agree that error messages often fall short of user expectations. Programmers make error messages that tell them what went wrong but when a normal user sees this I imagine it is very intimidating.
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